Elements of Hindu Iconography v2.c16.24

v2.c16.24

The hatred of the followers of the Vēdic cult towards the Śaivas seems to have been also attributable to the worship by the latter of the phallic emblem. The very touch of the Śaiva was considered by the Vaidika as imparting pollution, because the former set up, from the earliest known times, material representations of the phallus in their temples and offered worship to them. That the phallic worship is foreign to the Vēdic religion becomes quite clear from the references we meet with in the Ṛig-Vēda. In one place it is stated “The glorious Indra defies the hostile kings; let not those whose god is the śiśna approach our sacred ceremony” and in another we read “Proceeding to the conflict, and desiring to acquire them, he has gone to, and in hostile array besieged, inaccessible places, at the time when, irresistible, slaying those whose god is the śiśna, he by his craft conquered the riches of the city with a hundred gates.”* The worship of the Phallus which the non-Aryans of India shared with other nations who inhabited on the borders of the Mediterranean sea, has survived in India to this day. The *Dhruvabēras* in all Śiva temples is the *Linga* surmounted upon the *Yōni* or the *piṇḍikā* (pedestal). It is only in very rare instances we meet with the anthropomorphic representations of Śiva set up as the principal deity in Śiva temples. This non-Aryan phallic emblem seems to have been identified at a later period with Skambha of the Vēdas, wherein Skambha is conceived as co-extensive with the universe and comprehends in him the various parts of the material universe, as also the abstract qualities, such as, *tapas*, faith, truth and divisions of time. He is distinct from Prajāpati, who founds the universe upon him. “The thirty-three gods are comprehended in him and arose out of non-entity, which forms his highest member, as well as entity is embraced within him”. The gods who form part of him do homage to him. In the praise of Skambha we meet with the following passages, namely, “Where Skambha, generating,